Design and Control of a Novel Six-Legged Robot for Flat, Downhill, and Uphill Skiing.

This paper presents the design, control, and application of a novel six-legged skiing robot (SLSR) on flat and slope terrains. Imitating human skiing behavior, a unique ski with 5 degrees of freedom (DOFs) is designed, where the front and rear legs on the same side are connected to a ski, respectively. Each of the two middle leg tips has a ski stick. In order to improve the locomotion ability on the flat and uphill, we utilize a ducted-fan propulsion system (DFPS) to provide forward power. Then a new skiing control strategy is developed, which consists of a trajectory planner and a centroid balance controller (CBC). Finally, we conducted skiing experiments on a flat snow surface and slopes. The results show that the SLSR could successfully accelerate, decelerate, turn, and brake. Moreover, the SLSR can slide in a large range on flat ground and maintain a stable attitude. On the primary ski slope, the SLSR can go downhill as well as uphill.